In the footsteps of the great Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn who did more for the liberation of Russia--and the United States--from the false image of the October (Bolshevik, Communist) Revolution created by the lies of 73 years of global Soviet propaganda, I have done as much as I could to expose it as a vane and violent attempt to impose an utopia on Russia and the world.

In my 1991 book Russia Beyond Communism: A Chronicle of National Rebirth, I argued that the most promising exit from the impasse of the USSR was for Russia to return to its ancient spiritual roots, including Christianity and much of the pre-1917 cultural, economic and political inheritance. Instead of pursuing unworkable Soviet utopia, Russia should have returned to its traditional national identity and let other Soviet republics do the same.

I am happy to say that, to a large extent, this happened.[i] And it is still happening, even though there are many huge obstacles that New Russia has encountered on the path to its own identity. The greatest obstacle is the refusal of the USA to recognize Russia's quest for national self-identity, her sovereignty. This refusal has led to a New Cold War that is even more dangerous than the Old Cold War. The expansion of NATO to Russia’s border is one such worrisome and uncalled-for development. The US numerous unprovoked aggressions in the Middle East and elsewhere is another.

Domestically, the recent transfer of US mega media to a very few hands has effectively curtailed the freedom of expression. However, Donald Trump’s presidential victory signaled that the mega media, overwhelmingly geared against Trump, are not all-powerful. The Internet technology assured the freedom of heterodoxy the mega media has unsuccessfully tried to suppress.

The Unz Review is a flagship of heterodox opinion that seeks to help create an educated alternative to the failed foreign and domestic policies of the US. I have been reading its publications for a number of years and am convinced that it upholds best the standards of responsible free speech so fundamental for the US and the West.

I am especially delighted that the blog-magazine’s founder and primary writer Ron Unz has challenged its writers and readers to a dialogue on most controversial topics, including the role of Jews in the October (Bolshevik) Revolution in Russia. On RAGA’s behalf I already welcomed the recent call by Charles Bausman of the Russia Insider to “drop the Jew taboo” by translating his article into Russian and posting it on our site. Now am delighted to welcome Ron Unz’s American Pravda series of articles on similar issues.

[i] Post-Communist Russia Is Not the Soviet Union. By Daniel J. Mahoney. August 07, 2018 https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/08/07/post-communist_russia_is_not_the_soviet_union_137730.html

Ron is not the first Jew to point out that the Bolshevik leadership was heavily Jewish and thus challenge Soviet propaganda’s image of the October Revolution as a popular uprising. In the free election to Constituent Assembly to decide on the form of government in January 1918, the Bolsheviks garnered less than 25% of the vote. Then, Bolshevik troops forcibly dissolved the Assembly to dispersed workers’ demonstrations by gun fire to let Lenin and Trotsky stay in power.

It is doubtful that the majority of Russian Jews supported the violent revolution. In any case, many more Jews voted for the Zionists and Social Revolutionary party rather than the Bolsheviks. Not for nothing, Fanny Kaplan,[i] a Jewish Socialist Revolutionary, made a failed attempt to assassinate Lenin, and Leonid Kannegisser, [ii]a Jewish Tsar army cadet, assassinated Moisei Uritsky,[iii] the notorious brutal Jewish boss of the Petrograd Cheka.

Still, many more Jews of the Russian Empire did not want to do anything with the revolution as they believed their ongoing gradual emancipation assured their equality in Russia. Some of them sided with the White Army and, after the defeat by the Reds, joined the ranks of patriotic Russian emigrees forced to flee the USSR. In my book, Russia Beyond Communism (op.cit), in Chapter 4, I discussed Joseph Bickermann’s Russian collection of articles by a number of prominent Russian Jews opposed to Communism. In 1928 Joseph Bickermann published another anti-Soviet collection, this time in English: “Ten Years of the Bolshevic Domination”[iv]Thus, Ron Unz joins the ranks of those Jews who are so independent in their thinking that they defy any stereotypes. After all, the phenomenon of prophets as wise men standing alone against threatening crowds and against all shibboleths of the time is as Jewish as Jeremiah. I am especially delighted that Ron is an admirer of Solzhenitsyn as a writer and Russian prophet who helped Americans get rid of their pro-Soviet illusions. As the author of Solzhenitsyn and Dostoevsky: A Study in the Polyphonic Novel, I share Ron’s indignation over US media later vicious insinuations that Solzhenitsyn was an “anti-Semite”.

Most recently I have dealt with the issue of Jews vs. non-Jews in the Russian revolution in a longer article Emperor Michael II in the Solzhenitsyn House.[v] The article was dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the brutal murder of Mikhail (Michael), the last legal ruler of Russia, on June 13, 1918, in my native city of Perm. In fact, some historians in Russia, as well as the late Donald Crawford of UK, call Mikhail “The last Tsar”. In this instance I agree with them rather that my hero Solzhenitsyn who unfortunately, being unfamiliar with post-Soviet research, appraised Mikhail as a weakling and political non-entity of no consequence.

There are also serious US domestic considerations for taking Ron Unz and his alternative blog-magazine seriously. With great regret I must say that I have not seen the American people so deeply torn apart along political, racial, and economic and gender lines since I came to the States in 1966. Some people even talk about the threat of Civil War II Coming?[vi] It is painful to see as US left-liberal cum Neo-Con establishment is trying to divert attention of American people from pressing domestic problems to the imagined threat from Russia.

The RAGA was founded on the idea that world peace is best advanced by US-Russia dialogue whereas domestic tranquility is best assured by a polyphony of various ideological, political, economic or religious beliefs as long as their protagonists—be they Russian or American, Jewish or non-Jewish, Israeli or Palestinian, Christian or Muslim—hold their opinion honestly and engage their opponents as friends in a common search for truth, harmony and peace.

[ii]Leonid Akimovic Kannegisser (Russian: Леони́д Иоаки́мович Каннегисер, March 1896 – October 1918) was a Russian poet and military cadet, known for assassinating Moisei Uritsky, chief of the Cheka in Petrograd, on 17 August 1918. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonid_Kannegisser

[iii] Moisei Solomonovich Uritsky (Russian: Моисей Соломонович Урицкий; January 14, 1873–August 30, 1918) was a Bolshevik revolutionary leader in Russia. After the October Revolution, he was Chief of Cheka of Petrograd City. Uritsky was assassinated by Leonid Kannegisser, a military cadet, who then fled into the British embassy.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moisei_Uritsky

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